1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an abutment member with a diamond film for use in an electronic component placement apparatus for placing an electronic component onto a printed circuit board.
2. Description of the Related Art
To mount chip components onto a printed circuit board, a suction nozzle is used to suck an electronic component and then place it on the printed circuit board. Since such electronic components are typically made of hard materials such as ceramic, repeated suction steps cause wearing of the suction surface of the nozzle in a relatively short period of time, or chip the suction surface of the nozzle because of its brittleness, leading to faulty suction and even a total failure to the extent that the nozzle cannot be used anymore.
For this reason, a hard metal is brazed to the tip of a nozzle. Furthermore, as disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2-90700 and Japanese Examined Patent Publication No. 7-67030, the above problem is resolved by using a material having an excellent wear-resistant property, such as a ceramic.
Since pick and placement action is performed repeatedly at a fast rate to comply with mass production, even a suction bit of a hard metal or ceramic suffers wear with its suction surface damaged in a short period of time.
When a ceramic is employed, its bonding strength to a base tends to be so weak that the ceramic may come off the base.
When a chip component is mounted onto a printed circuit board, the chip component sucked and held by a suction nozzle is also held by four clamping fingers in two pairs, which are arranged in a cross configuration with the electronic component at the center of the cross configuration and with one pair in perpendicular to the other pair, each pair having two opposed clamping fingers moving apart from and toward each other. The chip component is mounted onto the printed circuit board after being correctly positioned or modified by these setup.
At least the tips of the clamping fingers are made of a hard metal, stainless steel or SK material.
Electronic components are generally made of a hard material such as a ceramic. Since the abutment surface of the clamping finger is subjected to repeated positioning actions with each electronic component, the abutment surface wears in a relatively short period of time, and is chipped excessively enough to cause a faulty positioning or a total failure to the extent that the clamping finger cannot be used. As a result, the clamping fingers needs to be frequently replaced.